V***@tcq.net
2006-09-29 00:38:18 UTC
http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2006/3327kiracoff_berlin.html
This presentation appears in the July 7, 2006 issue of Executive
Intelligence Review.
The U.S.A.: Fascism Past and Present
by Clifford A. Kiracofe, Jr.
Here is the prepared address by Dr. Clifford A. Kiracofe, Jr. to an
EIR-sponsored seminar in Berlin, Germany on June 27, 2006. Kiracofe is
a former senior professional staff member of the U.S. Senate Committee
on Foreign Relations. Extemporaneous comments Dr. Kiracofe made as he
delivered his address, are included.
I would like to try to give some historical context to the current
political situation we find ourselves in, in the United States, and
also to try to establish some linkages or relationships, in a
historical context, between European Fascism, and fascism as it has
evolved in the United States this past century.
I thank our hosts for inviting me to speak today in our fifth meeting
at this fine venue. Colleagues who attended the last meeting in March
will recall I spoke on the theme of "U.S. Imperialism and the Rise of
the National Security State," a project undertaken by the imperial
faction in the United States for many decades now. Just as a quick
aside, you might trace our imperial faction, to the 1898 war with
Spain, as maybe a first real flowering of the some of the imperial
faction's activities. Today, I will present some background on Fascism
past and present in the United States.
In today's political situation in the United States we are, in effect,
confronting the same forces that attempted to impose overt fascist rule
in the United States during the 1930s. This is a story that is not
widely known in Europe, or even in the United States. Back then,
beginning in 1933, for example, a cabal of Wall Street financiers and
industrialists, who were enthusiastic supporters of Italian Fascism and
the German National Socialism, plotted a coup d'état against President
Franklin Roosevelt and our constitutional form of government.
My paper today considers briefly the following major points: first, the
current international situation and United States imperial policy;
second, the rise of fascism in United States politics; third, Wall
Street's attempted fascist coup d'état of 1934; fourth, Wall Street
and European Fascism, particularly Synarchy; and fifth, contemporary
American fascist ideology and the post-World War II era, that is to
say, the "Conservative Movement" and "New Right" in the United States.
U.S. Imperialism Constrained
What is the current context of United States imperialism?
At the international level, we see the emerging multipolar environment
developing. Russia is coming back from the trauma of the 1990s, China
and India are rising, and Europe, despite its internal situation,
remains nonetheless an international factor of undeniable importance.
We are not living in the so-called "unipolar world" fantasy of the
American neo-conservatives and that part of the imperial faction
influenced by such delusional policy ideas. We are living in an
emerging multipolar international environment which does now, and will
increasingly, place constraints on United States foreign policy,
particularly as the extent of American internal economic and social
weakness and vulnerability become apparent. External polling data,
since 2003, shows a collapse of United States prestige worldwide as a
result of the war on Iraq and other related factors.
The imperial faction has yet to adjust itself to international reality,
and this impairs U.S. national security, in the short, medium, and long
term. The imperial faction continues to attempt to consolidate a
transnational oligarchy subservient to Washington, through such
mechanisms as the Bilderberg Group, the Trilateral Commission, and the
Davos Group, among others. Dollar-based globalization is another
mechanism. But there is resistance as, for example, the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization indicates, and certainly, there are additional
calls for a New Bretton Woods to manage our international financial
system.
Rather than orient United States diplomacy to play a constructive role
in organizing the emerging multipolar world on Westphalian principles,
the Bush White House, since 2001, has sought to impose its concept of
unilateral global hegemony, with disastrous consequences.
Just this year alone, President Bush insulted China by his gross
mishandling of the state visit of Chinese President Hu Jintao. No
official state dinner was offered, and the White House gave press
credentials to a well-known Falun Gong activist, who then proceeded to
insult the Chinese President. Vice President Dick Cheney followed up by
insulting Russia during a major speech in Lithuania. As an additional
follow-up, Secretary of State Condi Rice proceeded to insult Russia on
its internal situation, and portrayed China as a "negative force" in
Asia.
Given Iran's powerful position inside Iraq and other factors, an
orderly withdrawal of United States forces will require a regional
arrangement supported by the major powers and the United Nations. The
United States must eventually make arrangements with Iran in order to
work out a regional settlement that would involve Iraq's neighbors,
namely Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait. Such a regional
solution necessarily must be coordinated with Russia, China, the EU,
Japan, and the United Nations.
Gen. William Odom, a respected former director of the National Security
Agency (NSA), recently said that the war in Iraq is the greatest
strategic mistake in the history of the United States. I certainly
agree with the general's view, but would add that many of us were
saying this publicly back in 2002, months before the United States
launched the war. The ideologically driven imperial faction in control
of United States policy would not listen to reason.
When a nation makes a strategic mistake, it pays a heavy price over an
extended period of time.
The Vietnam War had many associated costs in addition to the
unnecessary loss of blood and treasure. The United States was alienated
from world opinion and from our European allies. But more than that,
conditions were created for severe domestic economic consequences.
These negative consequences arose directly from the massive costs of
the war, added to the costs of President Johnson's simultaneous massive
domestic "Great Society" spending program. Our society was torn apart
for years by the stress of an unjust and unnecessary war.
What were the negative economic consequences?
In one word: "stagflation." From the late 1960s until the mid 1980s,
the United States experienced inflation together with economic
stagnation, or recession. The Nixon Administration did not solve the
problem. The Ford Administration did not solve the problem. The Carter
Administration did not solve the problem. The Reagan Administration,
through a massive military spending program-we can call this
"military Keynesianism"-was able to alter the situation somewhat by
plunging the nation further into unnecessary debt. Finally, during the
Clinton Administration, the United States had a positive economic
recovery and performance that would have left our country in good
shape, had not the Bush Administration undertaken a catastrophic
foreign policy.
But, just in the last few weeks, we have started to see that old word
"stagflation" coming back into the public discourse. We have increasing
inflation together with a slowed economy, under the general condition
of "twin deficits," meaning the ever-increasing domestic budget deficit
and current account deficit.
Perhaps you did not notice that, in March of this year, the White House
stopped making public the "M3" monetary statistic. This political move
was, of course, undertaken to make more opaque the disintegrating
United States economic situation, with implications for the dollar, by
obscuring this significant measure of monetary inflation.
The Rise of Fascism in United States Politics
What is fascism? As one succinct definition has it: "Fascism is the
open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinist,
and most imperialist elements of finance capital."[1]
What are the main features of fascism? They include: the rise of a
demagogic leader sponsored by a plutocratic oligarchy, the curtailment
of civil liberties, the elimination of a free press, the emasculation
of labor and the labor movement, and the destruction of intellectual
and political opposition.[2]
How did this come about? Let's take a look at the 1930s in the United
States, the political situation then, which involved the rise of an
American form of fascism, unfortunately.
Prof. Gaetano Salvemini, a famous anti-Fascist intellectual and member
of the Italian Socialist Party, warned of a "new brand of fascism" in
the United States. While teaching in exile at Harvard, during the
1930s, he pointed to what he called "fascism of corporate business
enterprise in this country."
Other voices in the 1930s, confronting the fascist challenge, were
heard from members of President Roosevelt's own Cabinet.
Harold Ickes (1874-1952), a Progressive Republican who served in
Franklin Roosevelt's Cabinet during the New Deal, forcefully condemned
fascism in a speech to the American Civil Liberties Union on Dec. 8,
1937.[3] He pointed to "the ability and willingness to turn the
concentrated wealth of America against the welfare of America." He
said,
Let no one sleepily believe that our democratic form of government is
necessarily secure for all time to come. We have seen dictatorships in
other lands reach out and destroy constitutional democracies, states
combine not for protection but for aggression. We have discovered that
Fascism has not been quarantined, but that it is capable of leaping
wide oceans.
Well, what happened back in the 1930s? I would just interject,
parenthetically, that this is a time when our current President's
grandfather was quite active on Wall Street-that family was quite
active on Wall Street.
As I said at the outset, in today's political situation in the United
States we are, in effect, confronting the same forces that attempted to
impose fascism in the United States during the 1930s. Back then,
beginning in 1933, a cabal of Wall Street financiers and
industrialists, who were enthusiastic supporters of International
Fascism in Italy and Germany, and were well introduced to the higher
circles of Europe, supported various movements of international Fascism
in Germany, France, Italy, and England. Many of the American
businessmen involved, were intimately involved in business arrangements
with these very European financial and industrial circles. This cabal
plotted a coup d'état against President Franklin Roosevelt and our
Constitution. Let me recall the words of Ambassador William E. Dodd,
Franklin Roosevelt's Ambassador to Germany. While here in our embassy,
he watched American businessmen, one after the other, come to Germany
in support of the Hitler regime. In 1937, he referred to the American
section of the transnational fascist oligarchy of the era as follows:
A clique of U.S. industrialists is hell-bent to bring a fascist state
to supplant our democratic government and is working closely with the
fascist regime in Germany and Italy. I have had plenty of opportunity
in my post in Berlin to witness how close some of our American ruling
families are to the Nazi regime. They extended aid to help Fascism
occupy the seat of power, and they are helping to keep it there.
Fortunately, the 1933-34 coup plot was foiled by President Roosevelt.
But after Roosevelt's death, the cabal was able to continue its program
for a fascist and imperial America during the Truman Administration,
through the Cold War era, and down to today's White House and Congress.
Simply put, upon Franklin Roosevelt's election in 1932, the Wall Street
cabal took a decision to use strategies and methods that had been used
by Fascist circles in Europe, to gain influence and political power.
The Wall Street cabal was well introduced into the higher circles in
Europe that supported the various movements of International Fascism,
and the Nazi movement, in Germany, France, Italy, and England, because
many of the American businessmen involved in the Wall Street cabal were
intimately involved in business arrangements with these European
financial and industrial circles.[4]
The strategies and methods of which I am speaking include the formation
of action committees and mass movements, including violent
organizations, which involved political as well as religious appeals to
the middle and working classes. The elite circles involved in the Wall
Street cabal established their own higher-level organizations to
coordinate their own activities and the activities of the mass
organizations which they caused to come into being.
Wall Street's Fascist `Liberty League'
But let me explain a little bit more about some of the forces behind
this business plot.
Let me comment briefly on the activities of the so-called "American
Liberty League" (or simply "Liberty League") organization, a powerful
elite organization that the Wall Street cabal formed in 1933 and 1934,
and which operated until 1940. I will place particular emphasis on the
relationship between the fascist U.S. organizations and their
counterparts in Europe.
The Liberty League was interfaced with a variety of fascist
organizations, specifically modeled on European Fascist organizations
such as the French Croix de Feu.[5] The financial and big business
interests behind the Liberty League in the United States paralleled and
worked with the Confederazione dell'Industria-Olivetti, Agnelli, and
that cabal-that put Mussolini into power, and the
Thyssen-Krupp-Voegeler-Flick network that put Hitler into power.
The formation of the "American Liberty League" was announced on Aug.
23, 1934. Its intent was to overturn the New Deal, President Franklin
Roosevelt, and the Constitution. The leadership of the organization
comprised prominent members of the Wall Street plutocracy and a number
of prominent politicians, Democrat and Republican.
This American Liberty League was to impose a fascist form of government
on the United States, by working behind the scenes to influence
developments in high politics.
Among the key Wall Street and big business interests behind the Liberty
League were the House of Morgan, the DuPonts, and the Kuhn Loeb
investment-banking interests. Representatives of industrial interests
such as General Motors (controlled by DuPont interests), U.S. Steel
(linked to the Morgan interests), and Remington Arms (controlled by
DuPont) were also deeply involved. The publishing industry was
represented by the Hearst interests.
Members of the Liberty League organization were part of the prior
"Business Plot" of 1933-34 which had planned an armed coup d'état
against President Roosevelt. The plot was exposed by the very U.S.
Marine Corps general the Wall Street cabal thought they had recruited
to lead the coup, Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler, the man they sought to
impose as dictator on the United States. He played along with the plot,
and then immediately revealed the plot to President Roosevelt, whom he
greatly admired, and then exposed it publicly in newspaper interviews
and during testimony before a special investigative committee in the
United States House of Representatives, the McCormack-Dickstein
Committee.[6] The coup d'état was foiled.
Nonetheless, this organization continued to operate, publicly, and
included very top leaders of both the Democratic Party and the
Republican Party.
So now we can see a picture developing in our internal politics in the
1930s, involving top-level Democratic Party persons, including the
chairman of the National Democratic Party himself, even Al Smith,
former Democratic Party Presidential candidate, and top Republican
Congressmen and Senators, aligning against the New Deal, and aligning
behind fascism. So this is a penetration of both political parties,
which I would like us to bear in mind.
The McCormack-Dickstein Committee was established to investigate the
events of 1933-34 to determine to what extent an actual coup plot, had
been in motion. The committee concluded there had been such a plot but
specific information and testimony as to the Wall Street connection was
suppressed. According to the Committee report:
In the last few weeks of the committee's official life it received
evidence showing that certain persons had made an attempt to establish
a fascist government in this country. There is no question that these
attempts were discussed, were planned, and might have been placed in
execution when and if the financial backers deemed it expedient. This
committee received evidence from Maj. Gen. Smedley D. Butler (retired),
twice decorated by the Congress of the United States. He testified
before the committee as to conversations with one Gerald C. MacGuire,
in which the latter is alleged to have suggested the formation of a
fascist army under the leadership of General Butler.
MacGuire denied these allegations under oath, but your committee was
able to verify all the pertinent statements made by General Butler,
with the exception of the direct statement suggesting the creation of
the organization. This, however, was corroborated in the correspondence
of MacGuire with his principal, Robert Sterling Clark, of New York
City, while MacGuire was abroad studying the various forms of veterans
organizations of Fascist character.[7]
The work of this committee later led to the formation of the U.S. House
Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) which was authorized to
investigate subversive Communist and fascist activity in the United
States. Congressman John McCormack later became Speaker of the House,
1961-71.
With respect to the Business Plot, certain features deserve scrutiny.
MacGuire, a Wall Street bond salesman, was recruited by a circle of
financiers to first collect information in Europe in 1933 about the
methods of Fascist organizations, and then to be the intermediary
between the Wall Street cabal and General Butler. MacGuire was employed
as a bond salesman by Robert Sterling Clark (1877-1956), Yale graduate
and heir to the Singer Sewing Machine fortune, and an art collector who
lived in Paris. MacGuire had been active in the American Legion, a
World War I veterans' organization established by the Morgan interests.
With Clark in the plot was Grayson Mallet-Prevost Murphy, head of a
Wall Street brokerage house and director of Morgan-aligned
companies.[8] Murphy, a founder of the American Legion, became the
treasurer of the Liberty League. Murphy, who was a graduate of West
Point, had a prior record of international intrigue and was used by
President Theodore Roosevelt for secret missions, particularly in Latin
America.
The American Legion war veterans' organization was established in 1919.
The National Commander of the American Legion in 1922-23, Col. Alvin
Owsley (1888-1967), put the matter clearly when he said, "If ever
needed, the American Legion stands ready to protect our country's
institutions and ideals as the Fascisti dealt with the destructionists
who menaced Italy. Do not forget that the Fascisti are to Italy what
the American Legion is to the United States."[9] In 1931, the National
Commander of the American Legion, Ralph T. O'Neill, gave the Italian
Ambassador to the United States, a copy of a resolution of the American
Legion Executive Committee praising Mussolini as a great leader.
The president of the Liberty League was Jouett Shouse (1879-1968), a
former member of the U.S. Congress from Kansas (1915-19), and President
Woodrow Wilson's Assistant Secretary of the Treasury (1919-20). Shouse,
a former chairman of the Democratic Party's National Executive
Committee, was married to a daughter of the Boston merchant Filene
family. The key members of the Liberty League itself were such business
and financial personalities as: William Knudson of General Motors;
Nathan L. Miller, counsel of U.S. Steel; Irene, Pierre, and Lammot
DuPont[10]; Jacob Raskob of DuPont and General Motors, and the Hearst
interests. Political personalities included former Gov. Al Smith of New
York, the Democratic presidential candidate of 1928. Raskob was a
former chairman of the Democratic Party National Committee.
Closely associated with the activities of the Liberty League, and its
satellite action organizations such as the "Crusaders," were
influential members of the board of the American Jewish Committee:
Irving Lehman, of Lehman Brothers; Lessing J. Rosenwald, chairman of
Sears Roebuck; Roger W. Strauss, director of Revere Copper and Brass;
Louis Edward Kirstein, vice president of Filene's; Joseph M. Proskauer,
who was a director of the American Liberty League; Henry Ittleson, who
was president of the Commercial Investment Trust A.G. of Berlin; and
Albert D. Lasker, who served on the Crusaders board.
The American Jewish Committee was founded in 1906 as a foreign-policy
lobby group that focussed on human rights in Russia. Its publication
Commentary, edited from 1960-95 by Norman Podhoretz, has been the
leading vector for decades promoting so-called "neo-conservative"
foreign policy and the destabilization of the Middle East.[11]
As for the Crusaders organization I just mentioned, it was an
anti-labor organization opposed to New Deal policies whose board
included Albert D. Lasker, as just noted; James P. Warburg; and John W.
Davis (1873-1955), legal counsel for the Morgan interests and U.S.
Steel among others. Davis was the former Democratic Party Presidential
candidate in 1924, and lost to Republican Calvin Coolidge. Prior to
this he had served as the U.S. Ambassador at London, 1918-21.
Additional satellites of the Liberty League were: the Southern
Committee to Uphold the Constitution, the Farmers' Independence
Council, and the Sentinels of the Republic.
I want to give you a little flavor, just as an example, of the thinking
of one of the participants in this business group, Mr. William Randolf
Hearst, a well-known publishing magnate in our country, who owned
hundreds of newspapers.
Hearst's involvement with the Liberty League is significant. The Hearst
interests interfaced with the financial interests of West Coast
financier A.P. Giannini's TransAmerica company, and Bank of America.
This bank reportedly handled Mussolini's financial interests in the
United States. The Hearst interests also interfaced with the British
imperial interests of Sir Henry Deterding and his Royal Dutch Shell
group, as well as with Lord Rothermere's interests in Canada.[12]
Deterding and Rothermere provided financial support to Sir Oswald
Moseley's Fascist movement in the United Kingdom. Deterding made use of
the shipping company operated by Hypolite Worms to move Royal Dutch
Shell oil around the world. The Lazard Frères Paris office handled
Royal Dutch Shell business in France. Furthermore, it was the Lazard
group that organized the Banque Worms in the late 1920s.
The Hearst interests controlled an important share of the Remington
Arms Corporation of which the DuPont interests had the controlling
share. Remington small arms were reportedly to have been made available
to 500,000 para-military forces operating in the service of the
Business Plot which planned to seize Washington, D.C., the nation's
capital, by force.
For clarity, let me illustrate press baron William Randolph Hearst's
attitude toward European Fascism and National Socialism, a perspective
also promoted by the Time-Life-Fortune publishing empire of Henry Luce.
Let me quote Hearst, speaking in the 1930s:
The fascist party of Italy was organized to quell the disturbances and
disorders of communism. The fascist party of Germany was organized for
the same purpose. It was intended to and very likely did prevent
Germany from going communist and cooperating with Soviet Russia. This
is the great policy, the great achievement that makes the Hitler regime
popular with the German people.[13]
That's probably the major publishing magnate in the United States
during the 1930s. And if you just take a look at Time magazine during
the similar period, you will note that Mr. Mussolini's picture appeared
on the cover of Time magazine five times.
The "Business Plot" conspirators of 1933, with additional supporters,
created the Liberty League in 1934. This time, the objective was to
combat the New Deal and replace Roosevelt in the Presidential election
of 1936 by getting behind a Republican opponent, which came to be Gov.
Alf Landon of Kansas, a moderate, and ironically, himself, a mild
supporter of the New Deal. Publicly, Landon-and the Republican
Party-rejected Liberty League endorsement.
Moderate advisors of Landon, however, were pushed aside through Liberty
League influence. One case in point was Prof. Andrew Cordier, who was
advising Landon on foreign policy and international relations. A few
years ago, a relative of mine, who was a friend of Cordier and one of
his former students, told me the story of how the Liberty League
intrigued against the professor. But Cordier went on to become
Undersecretary of the United Nations in charge of the General Assembly
and Related Affairs from 1946 to 1961. He then joined the faculty of
Columbia University and rose to become its president.
As the 1936 election turned out, Roosevelt crushed Landon, although
this did not stop the intrigues of the Liberty League network and its
successors. For example, during the Truman Administration, Dean Acheson
(1893-1971), an influential Washington, D.C. attorney, became Secretary
of State under President Truman.[14] Acheson had been a member of the
American Liberty League.
Is it any coincidence today that Condi Rice praises Acheson and
President Bush praises Truman? Certainly not. We can recall the close
business connection between the Bush family and pro-Nazi financial and
industrial circles in Germany, particularly the Thyssen interests.[15]
Wall Street and Synarchy
How did all this come about?
I mentioned the matter of "Synarchy" briefly at one of our earlier
conferences here in Berlin. Let me just make a few brief comments today
in that regard. Synarchy provided ideological orientation for Wall
Street circles with respect to economic, political, and social
organization.
For example, the American Liberty League itself promoted the social
ideas of Dr. Alexis Carrel, French biologist and eugenicist associated
with French Synarchist circles.[16] He had written a number of
best-selling books in the 1930s. Carrel's controlling ideas were
clearly expressed in his book Man, This Unknown (L'Homme cet Inconnu),
in which he argued for mankind to follow the guidance of an elite class
and to implement enforced eugenics for population management. It was
Carrel who had first suggested the use of gas chambers for eugenic
purposes on a mass basis. Carrel, in 1937, joined a well-funded French
research institute called the Centre d'Études des Problèmes Humains
(CEPH) operated by Jean Coutrot, an eminence of the French Synarchy who
also had ties to the British Fabian Society via the Huxleys and others.
I would note in passing that Carrel's ideas have influenced the
ideology of contemporary Islamic terrorism via Sayyed Qutb of the
Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and Maulana Maududi of the Pakistani
Jamaat-i-Islaami.[17]
The word "Synarchy," and its associated ideology, was invented by the
19th-Century French occultist Alexandre St. Yves d'Alveydre
(1842-1909), who headed the esoteric Martinist Order. Born in 1842, he
adopted the outlook of leading European intellectuals of the extreme
right, Joseph de Maistre, Louis de Bonald, and the mystical occultism
of Fabre d'Olivet (1767-1825), Napoleon's personal occult advisor.
St. Yves created an extreme right ideology to oppose what he perceived
to be "anarchy," particularly what he perceived to be anarchy among
nations. He called his new ideology "Synarchy" and revealed it in quite
some detail in his book Mission des Souverains, first published in
1882.
The economic dimension of Synarchy influenced the "corporatist"
political ideologies and movements of the early 20th Century such as
Fascism. Corporative ideology called for the organization of society
with control held by the ruling oligarchic and plutocratic class. Labor
was to be crushed and parliamentary government was to be eliminated.
St. Yves' vision for Europe, as outlined in Chapter XII of his book,
called for organizing Europe through a regional (Europe-wide) council
composed of corporative chambers of economists, financiers, and
industrialists. At the national level, each country would have such a
council of its own. Through this process, finance and industry would be
concentrated, and become the main political power governing society, a
society in which labor was to be coerced into submission.
After World War I, we find in Europe the establishment of a number of
Fascist movements beginning with Mussolini in Italy in 1919, but then
spreading to France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and elsewhere. A
remarkable feature of this political phenomenon was the spread of
secret underground networks promoting Synarchy in order to create
Fascist states and five Fascist regional blocs such as Pan-Europe,
Pan-America, Pan-Eurasia, Pan-Asia, and a Fascist British Commonwealth.
One significant vector in all this was the esoteric Martinist Order,
which penetrated many regular freemasonic lodges, creating a certain
dangerous dissidence. The French Synarchists formed their secret
political society in 1922 which was called the Mouvement Synarchique
d'Empire, as the French police and intelligence services discovered
over a decade later.[18]
This overall political phenomenon can be justly viewed as a
continuation of the well-organized 19th-Century reaction against
progressive liberal fraternal organizations and political movements
that fought for national unity, democracy, constitutionalism, and
parliamentary government.[19] One significant feature of 19th-Century
European politics was the creation of what we can characterize as
police states based to a large degree on the Napoleonic model. In the
20th Century, police states reemerge under republican guise.
Fascist Ideology:
The U.S. `Conservative Movement'
and `New Right'
Since 9/11, we can see an incipient police-state process developing
more openly in the United States under the framework of a so-called
"National Security State." But the foundations for this were prepared
for a number of decades.
After World War II, the so-called "Conservative Movement" in the United
States undertook the penetration of the Republican Party.[20] I would
like to make it clear that the traditional Republican Party, as
established by Abraham Lincoln, has nothing in common with the radical
right-wing ideology of the pre-World War II Liberty League or the
post-World War II "Conservative Movement" and "New Right."
Nonetheless, today's Republican Party is in the grip of the Wall
Street-backed "Conservative Movement" and "New Right" linked to a mass
political base of religious Fundamentalists committed to theocracy.[21]
The post-World War II "Conservative Movement" and "New Right" are
nothing more than the pre-war Liberty League operation in a more
sophisticated form. The Presidential candidacy of Barry Goldwater in
1960 opened the door to a penetration of the Republican Party by the
"Conservative Movement." As I pointed out in my paper here this March,
the Nixon Administration, influenced in particular by George Shultz and
his circle, took a dramatic turn toward the erection of an imperial
Presidency and National Security State.[22]
Today, the Bush Administration, unfortunately, replicates the Nixon
Administration, but is worse.[23]
Radical Right ideology is promoted through the organized intellectual
activity funded by a small group of private foundations backing a
so-called "conservative" and "neo-conservative" ideology that is, in
fact, similar to the European Fascist ideology of the 1920s and 1930s.
These foundations include: the Bradley Foundation, the Koch
Foundations, the Smith Richardson Foundation, and the Olin Foundation.
Associated "think tanks" would include the Heritage Foundation and the
American Enterprise Institute, both of Washington, D.C. These
organizations are, in essence, continuing the work of the American
Liberty League.[24]
The main intent, of either the American version of fascism, or the
European version, is to increase the power and influence of
international finance and big business in the internal politics of the
United States, first by attacking state institutions and their proper
role of oversight and regulation and, secondly by coercing labor.
Promotion of the so-called "Chicago School" and "Austrian School" of
economics is one method used in this program to promote oligarchic and
plutocratic economic and political power. A significant consequence of
this process for external policy is, of course, the promotion of an
imperial foreign policy in the service of international finance and big
business, and the promotion of so-called "globalization" to empower a
certain transnational oligarchy.
Key features of the contemporary "New Right" and "neo-conservative"
ideology in the United States are drawn from three main European
sources: Italian nationalism and Fascism, French Integralism, and
German National Socialism.
With respect to Italian nationalism and Fascism, we can see the
influence of Michael Ledeen, a specialist on Italian political thought,
who is a major neo-conservative thinker in the United States.
neo-conservatives, who control our foreign policy, by the way, appear
to incorporate elements of the nationalist thought of Enrico Corradini
(1865-1931) together with the Fascist program of Benito Mussolini.[25]
Most striking is the neo-conservative call for the United States to
have a foreign policy of "national greatness," which is precisely the
formulation of Corradini that inspired two Italian imperial wars
against Ethiopia. One can argue that, for the neo-conservatives, Iraq
is Mussolini's Ethiopia policy revisited.
The French integralism of Charles Maurras is paralleled in the American
"New Right," in both Protestant and Catholic manifestations. Maurras
himself was linked to the Martinist Order through his friendship with
its then Grand Master, Gérard Encausse (1865-1916), who was a follower
of St. Yves d'Alveydre. The Christian Coalition organization which
emerged in 1988, is but one example. In the last few years, we have
seen a revival of the ideas of the integralist Catholic, Jean Ousset,
himself a vector of Synarchy, and once the private secretary of Charles
Maurras, and, some French colleagues inform me, that Mr. Ousset's
operations after World War II, were financed by the Banque Worms group.
With respect to German Fascism, we can see in the United States today
the revival, over the last several decades, of the ideology of Carl
Schmitt, the Nazi jurist. This ideology, many believe, is directly
responsible for the police-state stance taken by the neo-fascist
"Federalist Society" of lawyers, established in the United States in
1982, who have worked inside and outside the Bush Administration to
erect what they call the "Unitary Executive." In Berlin today, I think
we should be frank and say the Federalist Society for over two decades
had been reviving the "Führerprinzip."
I discussed the revival of Carl Schmitt's foreign policy concepts by
Paul Nitze, and others, here in March. These concepts include the
concept of permanent "enmity" and "enemies," and the necessity for
"states of emergency." Such ideas were derived in part from the
writings of the Gustav Ratzenhofer (1842-1904), an Austrian General and
Social Darwinist sociologist.[26]
We can place the American Christian Right today within the context of
the Gleichschaltung [Nazification of all institutions] of 1933 and the
formation of the Protestant Reich Church. I would suggest that the 25
million hard-core fundamentalists forming President Bush's "political
base" in the United States-the 16 million Southern Baptists, in
particular, and another 9 million Adventists and Pentacostalists, for
example-parallel, although in a different form and in a different
time, the German Reich Church.[27]
In closing, I would like to suggest, with a sense of some urgency, that
colleagues here make an effort in their research and writing to focus
on comparative study of contemporary United States internal politics,
and external policy, with that of International Fascism of the 1920s
and 1930s.
Let me again quote Harold Ickes, the man who organized progressive
Republican support for President Roosevelt and the New Deal. Being a
Republican, I like to quote Mr. Ickes. In 1943, in the middle of World
War II, he said:
We should never forget that, in an era of unrest, a demagogue even as
fantastic as Hitler first appeared to be can develop at such a pace
that, before we realize it, he is beyond our catching. There are men
here, and in England and in France as well, who believe in their hearts
that a dictatorship is more desirable than democratic
self-government.... That type of American big business and concentrated
wealth are not afraid of a dictatorship, even such a one as Hitler's,
is attested by recent shocking disclosures with respect to secret and
intimate business alliances between them and German big
business-alliances that deliberately strike at the common man.[28]
[1] 13th Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist
International, Moscow 1933.
[2] For background see, Hans Rogger and Eugen Weber eds., The European
Right. A Historical Profile (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1966) and Ernst Nolte, Der Faschismus in seiner Epoche. Action
française, italienischer Faschismus, Nationalsozialismus, (Munich:
1965).
[3] For valuable insight into the New Deal, see, The Secret Diary of
Harold L. Ickes. The First Thousand Days 1933-1936 (New York: Simon &
Schuster, 1953).
[4] For background, see, Charles Higham, Trading with the Enemy. The
Nazi-American Money Plot 1933-1949 (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1983);
William C. McNeill, American Money and the Weimar Republic. Economics
and Politics on the Eve of the Great Depression (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1986); Henry Ashby Turner, Jr., German Big Business
and the Rise of Hitler (New York: Oxford, 1985); Joseph Borkin, The
Crime and Punishment of I.G. Farben (New York: The Free Press, 1978);
Richard Sasuly, IG Farben (New York: Boni Gaer, 1947); L. Wulfsohn et
G. Wernle, L'Evasion des Capitaux Alemands (Paris: Société Anonyme
d'Editions, 1923; P.F. de Villemarest, Les Sources Financières du
Nazisme (Cierrey, France: Editions CEI, 1984).
[5] For background on the French Right see, Eugen Weber, "France," in
Rogger and Weber, op. cit. pp. 71-127.
[6] The members of the committee were: John W. McCormack (D-Mass.),
Samuel Dickstein (D-N. Y.), Carl May Weideman (D-Mich.), Charles Kramer
(D-Calif.), Thomas A. Jenkins (R-Ohio), James Willis Taylor (R-Tenn.),
Ulysses Samuel Guyer (R-Kan.), Thomas W. Hardwick, Counsel.
[7] U.S. House of Representatives, 74th Congress, 1st Session, The
Special Committee on Un-American Activities Authorized to Investigate
Nazi Propaganda and Certain Other Propaganda Activities.
[8] He was a director of the Guaranty Trust Company, Anaconda Copper,
Chile Copper, Goodyear Tire, Bethlehem Steel, and the New York
Transportation Company. He was decorated with the Crown of Italy by the
Italian Fascist regime.
[9] As quoted in the Journal of the National Education Association. See
the Owsley related website: http://www.library.unt.edu/archives/
Owsley/openingpage/index.htm.
[10] Lammot (1880-1952), Irénée (1876-1963), and Pierre (1870-1954)
DuPont were the sons of Lammot DuPont (1831-84) and Mary Belin
(1839-1913), who was of Jewish ancestry. For background see, Leonard
Mosely, Blood Relations. The Rise and Fall of the duPonts of Delaware
(New York: Atheneum, 1980).
[11] See President Bush's speeches to the American Jewish Committee:
"President Attends the American Jewish Committees Centennial Dinner,"
May 4, 2006 at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/
releases/2006/05/20060504-15.html and "Remarks By the President to the
American Jewish Committee," May 3, 2001 at
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/ releases/2001/05/20010504.html.
[12] On Deterding see, Glyn Roberts, The Most Powerful Man in the
World. The Life of Sir Henry Deterding (New York: Covici Friede, 1938).
[13] As quoted in George Seldes, You Can't Do That (1937), p. 222.
[14] Acheson's father, Rev. Edward Campion Acheson, an Englishman, was
an Anglican priest who served in Canada before immigrating to the
United States and later becoming Bishop of Connecticut. His mother,
Eleanor Gooderham, was the granddaughter of William Gooderham, a
Canadian distillery magnate.
[15] See, Kevin Phillips, American Dynasty. Aristocracy, Fortune, and
the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush (New York: Viking, 2004),
passim.
[16] Frederick Rudolph, "The American Liberty League, 1934-1940," The
American Historical Review, Vol. 56, No. 1 (Oct. 1950), p. 28.
[17] Rudolph Walter, "Die seltsamen Lehren des Doktor Carrel. Wie ein
katholischer Arzt aus Frankreich zum Vordenker der radikalen Islamisten
wurde," Die Zeit, 31.07.03, No. 32.
[18] See, Geoffroy de Charnay [pseud.], Synarchie. Panorama de 25
***@aaes d'Activité Occulte (Paris: Editions Médicis, 1946).
[19] For background see, Frederick B. Artz, Reaction and Revolution
1814-1832 (New York: Harpers, 1934).
[20] For background see, George H. Nash, The Conservative Intellectual
Movement in the United States Since 1945 (New York: Basic Books, 1976)
and Shadia Drury, Leo Strauss and the American Right (New York: St.
Martin's Press, 1999).
[21] See, Kevin Phillips, American Theocracy (New York: Viking, 2006).
[22] Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Imperial Presidency (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1973).
[23] See, John W. Dean, Worse Than Watergate. The Secret Presidency of
George W. Bush (New York: Little Brown, 2004).
[24] For background information, see, RIGHT WEB at
http://rightweb.irc-online.org
[25] For background on the Right in Italy see, Salvatore Saladino,
"Italy," in Rogger and Weber, op. cit., pp. 208-260.
[26] For example, see, Gustav Ratzenhofer, Wesen und Zweck der Politik
(Leizig, 1893).
[27] See the speech of Secretary of State Rice to the Southern Baptist
Convention Annual Meeting, June 14, 2006.
http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2006/67896.htm
[28] Harold Ickes, The Autobiography of a Curmudgeon, Reynal &
Hitchcock, (1943).
©2006 by Clifford A. Kiracofe, Jr. All Rights Reserved
This presentation appears in the July 7, 2006 issue of Executive
Intelligence Review.
The U.S.A.: Fascism Past and Present
by Clifford A. Kiracofe, Jr.
Here is the prepared address by Dr. Clifford A. Kiracofe, Jr. to an
EIR-sponsored seminar in Berlin, Germany on June 27, 2006. Kiracofe is
a former senior professional staff member of the U.S. Senate Committee
on Foreign Relations. Extemporaneous comments Dr. Kiracofe made as he
delivered his address, are included.
I would like to try to give some historical context to the current
political situation we find ourselves in, in the United States, and
also to try to establish some linkages or relationships, in a
historical context, between European Fascism, and fascism as it has
evolved in the United States this past century.
I thank our hosts for inviting me to speak today in our fifth meeting
at this fine venue. Colleagues who attended the last meeting in March
will recall I spoke on the theme of "U.S. Imperialism and the Rise of
the National Security State," a project undertaken by the imperial
faction in the United States for many decades now. Just as a quick
aside, you might trace our imperial faction, to the 1898 war with
Spain, as maybe a first real flowering of the some of the imperial
faction's activities. Today, I will present some background on Fascism
past and present in the United States.
In today's political situation in the United States we are, in effect,
confronting the same forces that attempted to impose overt fascist rule
in the United States during the 1930s. This is a story that is not
widely known in Europe, or even in the United States. Back then,
beginning in 1933, for example, a cabal of Wall Street financiers and
industrialists, who were enthusiastic supporters of Italian Fascism and
the German National Socialism, plotted a coup d'état against President
Franklin Roosevelt and our constitutional form of government.
My paper today considers briefly the following major points: first, the
current international situation and United States imperial policy;
second, the rise of fascism in United States politics; third, Wall
Street's attempted fascist coup d'état of 1934; fourth, Wall Street
and European Fascism, particularly Synarchy; and fifth, contemporary
American fascist ideology and the post-World War II era, that is to
say, the "Conservative Movement" and "New Right" in the United States.
U.S. Imperialism Constrained
What is the current context of United States imperialism?
At the international level, we see the emerging multipolar environment
developing. Russia is coming back from the trauma of the 1990s, China
and India are rising, and Europe, despite its internal situation,
remains nonetheless an international factor of undeniable importance.
We are not living in the so-called "unipolar world" fantasy of the
American neo-conservatives and that part of the imperial faction
influenced by such delusional policy ideas. We are living in an
emerging multipolar international environment which does now, and will
increasingly, place constraints on United States foreign policy,
particularly as the extent of American internal economic and social
weakness and vulnerability become apparent. External polling data,
since 2003, shows a collapse of United States prestige worldwide as a
result of the war on Iraq and other related factors.
The imperial faction has yet to adjust itself to international reality,
and this impairs U.S. national security, in the short, medium, and long
term. The imperial faction continues to attempt to consolidate a
transnational oligarchy subservient to Washington, through such
mechanisms as the Bilderberg Group, the Trilateral Commission, and the
Davos Group, among others. Dollar-based globalization is another
mechanism. But there is resistance as, for example, the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization indicates, and certainly, there are additional
calls for a New Bretton Woods to manage our international financial
system.
Rather than orient United States diplomacy to play a constructive role
in organizing the emerging multipolar world on Westphalian principles,
the Bush White House, since 2001, has sought to impose its concept of
unilateral global hegemony, with disastrous consequences.
Just this year alone, President Bush insulted China by his gross
mishandling of the state visit of Chinese President Hu Jintao. No
official state dinner was offered, and the White House gave press
credentials to a well-known Falun Gong activist, who then proceeded to
insult the Chinese President. Vice President Dick Cheney followed up by
insulting Russia during a major speech in Lithuania. As an additional
follow-up, Secretary of State Condi Rice proceeded to insult Russia on
its internal situation, and portrayed China as a "negative force" in
Asia.
Given Iran's powerful position inside Iraq and other factors, an
orderly withdrawal of United States forces will require a regional
arrangement supported by the major powers and the United Nations. The
United States must eventually make arrangements with Iran in order to
work out a regional settlement that would involve Iraq's neighbors,
namely Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait. Such a regional
solution necessarily must be coordinated with Russia, China, the EU,
Japan, and the United Nations.
Gen. William Odom, a respected former director of the National Security
Agency (NSA), recently said that the war in Iraq is the greatest
strategic mistake in the history of the United States. I certainly
agree with the general's view, but would add that many of us were
saying this publicly back in 2002, months before the United States
launched the war. The ideologically driven imperial faction in control
of United States policy would not listen to reason.
When a nation makes a strategic mistake, it pays a heavy price over an
extended period of time.
The Vietnam War had many associated costs in addition to the
unnecessary loss of blood and treasure. The United States was alienated
from world opinion and from our European allies. But more than that,
conditions were created for severe domestic economic consequences.
These negative consequences arose directly from the massive costs of
the war, added to the costs of President Johnson's simultaneous massive
domestic "Great Society" spending program. Our society was torn apart
for years by the stress of an unjust and unnecessary war.
What were the negative economic consequences?
In one word: "stagflation." From the late 1960s until the mid 1980s,
the United States experienced inflation together with economic
stagnation, or recession. The Nixon Administration did not solve the
problem. The Ford Administration did not solve the problem. The Carter
Administration did not solve the problem. The Reagan Administration,
through a massive military spending program-we can call this
"military Keynesianism"-was able to alter the situation somewhat by
plunging the nation further into unnecessary debt. Finally, during the
Clinton Administration, the United States had a positive economic
recovery and performance that would have left our country in good
shape, had not the Bush Administration undertaken a catastrophic
foreign policy.
But, just in the last few weeks, we have started to see that old word
"stagflation" coming back into the public discourse. We have increasing
inflation together with a slowed economy, under the general condition
of "twin deficits," meaning the ever-increasing domestic budget deficit
and current account deficit.
Perhaps you did not notice that, in March of this year, the White House
stopped making public the "M3" monetary statistic. This political move
was, of course, undertaken to make more opaque the disintegrating
United States economic situation, with implications for the dollar, by
obscuring this significant measure of monetary inflation.
The Rise of Fascism in United States Politics
What is fascism? As one succinct definition has it: "Fascism is the
open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinist,
and most imperialist elements of finance capital."[1]
What are the main features of fascism? They include: the rise of a
demagogic leader sponsored by a plutocratic oligarchy, the curtailment
of civil liberties, the elimination of a free press, the emasculation
of labor and the labor movement, and the destruction of intellectual
and political opposition.[2]
How did this come about? Let's take a look at the 1930s in the United
States, the political situation then, which involved the rise of an
American form of fascism, unfortunately.
Prof. Gaetano Salvemini, a famous anti-Fascist intellectual and member
of the Italian Socialist Party, warned of a "new brand of fascism" in
the United States. While teaching in exile at Harvard, during the
1930s, he pointed to what he called "fascism of corporate business
enterprise in this country."
Other voices in the 1930s, confronting the fascist challenge, were
heard from members of President Roosevelt's own Cabinet.
Harold Ickes (1874-1952), a Progressive Republican who served in
Franklin Roosevelt's Cabinet during the New Deal, forcefully condemned
fascism in a speech to the American Civil Liberties Union on Dec. 8,
1937.[3] He pointed to "the ability and willingness to turn the
concentrated wealth of America against the welfare of America." He
said,
Let no one sleepily believe that our democratic form of government is
necessarily secure for all time to come. We have seen dictatorships in
other lands reach out and destroy constitutional democracies, states
combine not for protection but for aggression. We have discovered that
Fascism has not been quarantined, but that it is capable of leaping
wide oceans.
Well, what happened back in the 1930s? I would just interject,
parenthetically, that this is a time when our current President's
grandfather was quite active on Wall Street-that family was quite
active on Wall Street.
As I said at the outset, in today's political situation in the United
States we are, in effect, confronting the same forces that attempted to
impose fascism in the United States during the 1930s. Back then,
beginning in 1933, a cabal of Wall Street financiers and
industrialists, who were enthusiastic supporters of International
Fascism in Italy and Germany, and were well introduced to the higher
circles of Europe, supported various movements of international Fascism
in Germany, France, Italy, and England. Many of the American
businessmen involved, were intimately involved in business arrangements
with these very European financial and industrial circles. This cabal
plotted a coup d'état against President Franklin Roosevelt and our
Constitution. Let me recall the words of Ambassador William E. Dodd,
Franklin Roosevelt's Ambassador to Germany. While here in our embassy,
he watched American businessmen, one after the other, come to Germany
in support of the Hitler regime. In 1937, he referred to the American
section of the transnational fascist oligarchy of the era as follows:
A clique of U.S. industrialists is hell-bent to bring a fascist state
to supplant our democratic government and is working closely with the
fascist regime in Germany and Italy. I have had plenty of opportunity
in my post in Berlin to witness how close some of our American ruling
families are to the Nazi regime. They extended aid to help Fascism
occupy the seat of power, and they are helping to keep it there.
Fortunately, the 1933-34 coup plot was foiled by President Roosevelt.
But after Roosevelt's death, the cabal was able to continue its program
for a fascist and imperial America during the Truman Administration,
through the Cold War era, and down to today's White House and Congress.
Simply put, upon Franklin Roosevelt's election in 1932, the Wall Street
cabal took a decision to use strategies and methods that had been used
by Fascist circles in Europe, to gain influence and political power.
The Wall Street cabal was well introduced into the higher circles in
Europe that supported the various movements of International Fascism,
and the Nazi movement, in Germany, France, Italy, and England, because
many of the American businessmen involved in the Wall Street cabal were
intimately involved in business arrangements with these European
financial and industrial circles.[4]
The strategies and methods of which I am speaking include the formation
of action committees and mass movements, including violent
organizations, which involved political as well as religious appeals to
the middle and working classes. The elite circles involved in the Wall
Street cabal established their own higher-level organizations to
coordinate their own activities and the activities of the mass
organizations which they caused to come into being.
Wall Street's Fascist `Liberty League'
But let me explain a little bit more about some of the forces behind
this business plot.
Let me comment briefly on the activities of the so-called "American
Liberty League" (or simply "Liberty League") organization, a powerful
elite organization that the Wall Street cabal formed in 1933 and 1934,
and which operated until 1940. I will place particular emphasis on the
relationship between the fascist U.S. organizations and their
counterparts in Europe.
The Liberty League was interfaced with a variety of fascist
organizations, specifically modeled on European Fascist organizations
such as the French Croix de Feu.[5] The financial and big business
interests behind the Liberty League in the United States paralleled and
worked with the Confederazione dell'Industria-Olivetti, Agnelli, and
that cabal-that put Mussolini into power, and the
Thyssen-Krupp-Voegeler-Flick network that put Hitler into power.
The formation of the "American Liberty League" was announced on Aug.
23, 1934. Its intent was to overturn the New Deal, President Franklin
Roosevelt, and the Constitution. The leadership of the organization
comprised prominent members of the Wall Street plutocracy and a number
of prominent politicians, Democrat and Republican.
This American Liberty League was to impose a fascist form of government
on the United States, by working behind the scenes to influence
developments in high politics.
Among the key Wall Street and big business interests behind the Liberty
League were the House of Morgan, the DuPonts, and the Kuhn Loeb
investment-banking interests. Representatives of industrial interests
such as General Motors (controlled by DuPont interests), U.S. Steel
(linked to the Morgan interests), and Remington Arms (controlled by
DuPont) were also deeply involved. The publishing industry was
represented by the Hearst interests.
Members of the Liberty League organization were part of the prior
"Business Plot" of 1933-34 which had planned an armed coup d'état
against President Roosevelt. The plot was exposed by the very U.S.
Marine Corps general the Wall Street cabal thought they had recruited
to lead the coup, Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler, the man they sought to
impose as dictator on the United States. He played along with the plot,
and then immediately revealed the plot to President Roosevelt, whom he
greatly admired, and then exposed it publicly in newspaper interviews
and during testimony before a special investigative committee in the
United States House of Representatives, the McCormack-Dickstein
Committee.[6] The coup d'état was foiled.
Nonetheless, this organization continued to operate, publicly, and
included very top leaders of both the Democratic Party and the
Republican Party.
So now we can see a picture developing in our internal politics in the
1930s, involving top-level Democratic Party persons, including the
chairman of the National Democratic Party himself, even Al Smith,
former Democratic Party Presidential candidate, and top Republican
Congressmen and Senators, aligning against the New Deal, and aligning
behind fascism. So this is a penetration of both political parties,
which I would like us to bear in mind.
The McCormack-Dickstein Committee was established to investigate the
events of 1933-34 to determine to what extent an actual coup plot, had
been in motion. The committee concluded there had been such a plot but
specific information and testimony as to the Wall Street connection was
suppressed. According to the Committee report:
In the last few weeks of the committee's official life it received
evidence showing that certain persons had made an attempt to establish
a fascist government in this country. There is no question that these
attempts were discussed, were planned, and might have been placed in
execution when and if the financial backers deemed it expedient. This
committee received evidence from Maj. Gen. Smedley D. Butler (retired),
twice decorated by the Congress of the United States. He testified
before the committee as to conversations with one Gerald C. MacGuire,
in which the latter is alleged to have suggested the formation of a
fascist army under the leadership of General Butler.
MacGuire denied these allegations under oath, but your committee was
able to verify all the pertinent statements made by General Butler,
with the exception of the direct statement suggesting the creation of
the organization. This, however, was corroborated in the correspondence
of MacGuire with his principal, Robert Sterling Clark, of New York
City, while MacGuire was abroad studying the various forms of veterans
organizations of Fascist character.[7]
The work of this committee later led to the formation of the U.S. House
Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) which was authorized to
investigate subversive Communist and fascist activity in the United
States. Congressman John McCormack later became Speaker of the House,
1961-71.
With respect to the Business Plot, certain features deserve scrutiny.
MacGuire, a Wall Street bond salesman, was recruited by a circle of
financiers to first collect information in Europe in 1933 about the
methods of Fascist organizations, and then to be the intermediary
between the Wall Street cabal and General Butler. MacGuire was employed
as a bond salesman by Robert Sterling Clark (1877-1956), Yale graduate
and heir to the Singer Sewing Machine fortune, and an art collector who
lived in Paris. MacGuire had been active in the American Legion, a
World War I veterans' organization established by the Morgan interests.
With Clark in the plot was Grayson Mallet-Prevost Murphy, head of a
Wall Street brokerage house and director of Morgan-aligned
companies.[8] Murphy, a founder of the American Legion, became the
treasurer of the Liberty League. Murphy, who was a graduate of West
Point, had a prior record of international intrigue and was used by
President Theodore Roosevelt for secret missions, particularly in Latin
America.
The American Legion war veterans' organization was established in 1919.
The National Commander of the American Legion in 1922-23, Col. Alvin
Owsley (1888-1967), put the matter clearly when he said, "If ever
needed, the American Legion stands ready to protect our country's
institutions and ideals as the Fascisti dealt with the destructionists
who menaced Italy. Do not forget that the Fascisti are to Italy what
the American Legion is to the United States."[9] In 1931, the National
Commander of the American Legion, Ralph T. O'Neill, gave the Italian
Ambassador to the United States, a copy of a resolution of the American
Legion Executive Committee praising Mussolini as a great leader.
The president of the Liberty League was Jouett Shouse (1879-1968), a
former member of the U.S. Congress from Kansas (1915-19), and President
Woodrow Wilson's Assistant Secretary of the Treasury (1919-20). Shouse,
a former chairman of the Democratic Party's National Executive
Committee, was married to a daughter of the Boston merchant Filene
family. The key members of the Liberty League itself were such business
and financial personalities as: William Knudson of General Motors;
Nathan L. Miller, counsel of U.S. Steel; Irene, Pierre, and Lammot
DuPont[10]; Jacob Raskob of DuPont and General Motors, and the Hearst
interests. Political personalities included former Gov. Al Smith of New
York, the Democratic presidential candidate of 1928. Raskob was a
former chairman of the Democratic Party National Committee.
Closely associated with the activities of the Liberty League, and its
satellite action organizations such as the "Crusaders," were
influential members of the board of the American Jewish Committee:
Irving Lehman, of Lehman Brothers; Lessing J. Rosenwald, chairman of
Sears Roebuck; Roger W. Strauss, director of Revere Copper and Brass;
Louis Edward Kirstein, vice president of Filene's; Joseph M. Proskauer,
who was a director of the American Liberty League; Henry Ittleson, who
was president of the Commercial Investment Trust A.G. of Berlin; and
Albert D. Lasker, who served on the Crusaders board.
The American Jewish Committee was founded in 1906 as a foreign-policy
lobby group that focussed on human rights in Russia. Its publication
Commentary, edited from 1960-95 by Norman Podhoretz, has been the
leading vector for decades promoting so-called "neo-conservative"
foreign policy and the destabilization of the Middle East.[11]
As for the Crusaders organization I just mentioned, it was an
anti-labor organization opposed to New Deal policies whose board
included Albert D. Lasker, as just noted; James P. Warburg; and John W.
Davis (1873-1955), legal counsel for the Morgan interests and U.S.
Steel among others. Davis was the former Democratic Party Presidential
candidate in 1924, and lost to Republican Calvin Coolidge. Prior to
this he had served as the U.S. Ambassador at London, 1918-21.
Additional satellites of the Liberty League were: the Southern
Committee to Uphold the Constitution, the Farmers' Independence
Council, and the Sentinels of the Republic.
I want to give you a little flavor, just as an example, of the thinking
of one of the participants in this business group, Mr. William Randolf
Hearst, a well-known publishing magnate in our country, who owned
hundreds of newspapers.
Hearst's involvement with the Liberty League is significant. The Hearst
interests interfaced with the financial interests of West Coast
financier A.P. Giannini's TransAmerica company, and Bank of America.
This bank reportedly handled Mussolini's financial interests in the
United States. The Hearst interests also interfaced with the British
imperial interests of Sir Henry Deterding and his Royal Dutch Shell
group, as well as with Lord Rothermere's interests in Canada.[12]
Deterding and Rothermere provided financial support to Sir Oswald
Moseley's Fascist movement in the United Kingdom. Deterding made use of
the shipping company operated by Hypolite Worms to move Royal Dutch
Shell oil around the world. The Lazard Frères Paris office handled
Royal Dutch Shell business in France. Furthermore, it was the Lazard
group that organized the Banque Worms in the late 1920s.
The Hearst interests controlled an important share of the Remington
Arms Corporation of which the DuPont interests had the controlling
share. Remington small arms were reportedly to have been made available
to 500,000 para-military forces operating in the service of the
Business Plot which planned to seize Washington, D.C., the nation's
capital, by force.
For clarity, let me illustrate press baron William Randolph Hearst's
attitude toward European Fascism and National Socialism, a perspective
also promoted by the Time-Life-Fortune publishing empire of Henry Luce.
Let me quote Hearst, speaking in the 1930s:
The fascist party of Italy was organized to quell the disturbances and
disorders of communism. The fascist party of Germany was organized for
the same purpose. It was intended to and very likely did prevent
Germany from going communist and cooperating with Soviet Russia. This
is the great policy, the great achievement that makes the Hitler regime
popular with the German people.[13]
That's probably the major publishing magnate in the United States
during the 1930s. And if you just take a look at Time magazine during
the similar period, you will note that Mr. Mussolini's picture appeared
on the cover of Time magazine five times.
The "Business Plot" conspirators of 1933, with additional supporters,
created the Liberty League in 1934. This time, the objective was to
combat the New Deal and replace Roosevelt in the Presidential election
of 1936 by getting behind a Republican opponent, which came to be Gov.
Alf Landon of Kansas, a moderate, and ironically, himself, a mild
supporter of the New Deal. Publicly, Landon-and the Republican
Party-rejected Liberty League endorsement.
Moderate advisors of Landon, however, were pushed aside through Liberty
League influence. One case in point was Prof. Andrew Cordier, who was
advising Landon on foreign policy and international relations. A few
years ago, a relative of mine, who was a friend of Cordier and one of
his former students, told me the story of how the Liberty League
intrigued against the professor. But Cordier went on to become
Undersecretary of the United Nations in charge of the General Assembly
and Related Affairs from 1946 to 1961. He then joined the faculty of
Columbia University and rose to become its president.
As the 1936 election turned out, Roosevelt crushed Landon, although
this did not stop the intrigues of the Liberty League network and its
successors. For example, during the Truman Administration, Dean Acheson
(1893-1971), an influential Washington, D.C. attorney, became Secretary
of State under President Truman.[14] Acheson had been a member of the
American Liberty League.
Is it any coincidence today that Condi Rice praises Acheson and
President Bush praises Truman? Certainly not. We can recall the close
business connection between the Bush family and pro-Nazi financial and
industrial circles in Germany, particularly the Thyssen interests.[15]
Wall Street and Synarchy
How did all this come about?
I mentioned the matter of "Synarchy" briefly at one of our earlier
conferences here in Berlin. Let me just make a few brief comments today
in that regard. Synarchy provided ideological orientation for Wall
Street circles with respect to economic, political, and social
organization.
For example, the American Liberty League itself promoted the social
ideas of Dr. Alexis Carrel, French biologist and eugenicist associated
with French Synarchist circles.[16] He had written a number of
best-selling books in the 1930s. Carrel's controlling ideas were
clearly expressed in his book Man, This Unknown (L'Homme cet Inconnu),
in which he argued for mankind to follow the guidance of an elite class
and to implement enforced eugenics for population management. It was
Carrel who had first suggested the use of gas chambers for eugenic
purposes on a mass basis. Carrel, in 1937, joined a well-funded French
research institute called the Centre d'Études des Problèmes Humains
(CEPH) operated by Jean Coutrot, an eminence of the French Synarchy who
also had ties to the British Fabian Society via the Huxleys and others.
I would note in passing that Carrel's ideas have influenced the
ideology of contemporary Islamic terrorism via Sayyed Qutb of the
Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and Maulana Maududi of the Pakistani
Jamaat-i-Islaami.[17]
The word "Synarchy," and its associated ideology, was invented by the
19th-Century French occultist Alexandre St. Yves d'Alveydre
(1842-1909), who headed the esoteric Martinist Order. Born in 1842, he
adopted the outlook of leading European intellectuals of the extreme
right, Joseph de Maistre, Louis de Bonald, and the mystical occultism
of Fabre d'Olivet (1767-1825), Napoleon's personal occult advisor.
St. Yves created an extreme right ideology to oppose what he perceived
to be "anarchy," particularly what he perceived to be anarchy among
nations. He called his new ideology "Synarchy" and revealed it in quite
some detail in his book Mission des Souverains, first published in
1882.
The economic dimension of Synarchy influenced the "corporatist"
political ideologies and movements of the early 20th Century such as
Fascism. Corporative ideology called for the organization of society
with control held by the ruling oligarchic and plutocratic class. Labor
was to be crushed and parliamentary government was to be eliminated.
St. Yves' vision for Europe, as outlined in Chapter XII of his book,
called for organizing Europe through a regional (Europe-wide) council
composed of corporative chambers of economists, financiers, and
industrialists. At the national level, each country would have such a
council of its own. Through this process, finance and industry would be
concentrated, and become the main political power governing society, a
society in which labor was to be coerced into submission.
After World War I, we find in Europe the establishment of a number of
Fascist movements beginning with Mussolini in Italy in 1919, but then
spreading to France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and elsewhere. A
remarkable feature of this political phenomenon was the spread of
secret underground networks promoting Synarchy in order to create
Fascist states and five Fascist regional blocs such as Pan-Europe,
Pan-America, Pan-Eurasia, Pan-Asia, and a Fascist British Commonwealth.
One significant vector in all this was the esoteric Martinist Order,
which penetrated many regular freemasonic lodges, creating a certain
dangerous dissidence. The French Synarchists formed their secret
political society in 1922 which was called the Mouvement Synarchique
d'Empire, as the French police and intelligence services discovered
over a decade later.[18]
This overall political phenomenon can be justly viewed as a
continuation of the well-organized 19th-Century reaction against
progressive liberal fraternal organizations and political movements
that fought for national unity, democracy, constitutionalism, and
parliamentary government.[19] One significant feature of 19th-Century
European politics was the creation of what we can characterize as
police states based to a large degree on the Napoleonic model. In the
20th Century, police states reemerge under republican guise.
Fascist Ideology:
The U.S. `Conservative Movement'
and `New Right'
Since 9/11, we can see an incipient police-state process developing
more openly in the United States under the framework of a so-called
"National Security State." But the foundations for this were prepared
for a number of decades.
After World War II, the so-called "Conservative Movement" in the United
States undertook the penetration of the Republican Party.[20] I would
like to make it clear that the traditional Republican Party, as
established by Abraham Lincoln, has nothing in common with the radical
right-wing ideology of the pre-World War II Liberty League or the
post-World War II "Conservative Movement" and "New Right."
Nonetheless, today's Republican Party is in the grip of the Wall
Street-backed "Conservative Movement" and "New Right" linked to a mass
political base of religious Fundamentalists committed to theocracy.[21]
The post-World War II "Conservative Movement" and "New Right" are
nothing more than the pre-war Liberty League operation in a more
sophisticated form. The Presidential candidacy of Barry Goldwater in
1960 opened the door to a penetration of the Republican Party by the
"Conservative Movement." As I pointed out in my paper here this March,
the Nixon Administration, influenced in particular by George Shultz and
his circle, took a dramatic turn toward the erection of an imperial
Presidency and National Security State.[22]
Today, the Bush Administration, unfortunately, replicates the Nixon
Administration, but is worse.[23]
Radical Right ideology is promoted through the organized intellectual
activity funded by a small group of private foundations backing a
so-called "conservative" and "neo-conservative" ideology that is, in
fact, similar to the European Fascist ideology of the 1920s and 1930s.
These foundations include: the Bradley Foundation, the Koch
Foundations, the Smith Richardson Foundation, and the Olin Foundation.
Associated "think tanks" would include the Heritage Foundation and the
American Enterprise Institute, both of Washington, D.C. These
organizations are, in essence, continuing the work of the American
Liberty League.[24]
The main intent, of either the American version of fascism, or the
European version, is to increase the power and influence of
international finance and big business in the internal politics of the
United States, first by attacking state institutions and their proper
role of oversight and regulation and, secondly by coercing labor.
Promotion of the so-called "Chicago School" and "Austrian School" of
economics is one method used in this program to promote oligarchic and
plutocratic economic and political power. A significant consequence of
this process for external policy is, of course, the promotion of an
imperial foreign policy in the service of international finance and big
business, and the promotion of so-called "globalization" to empower a
certain transnational oligarchy.
Key features of the contemporary "New Right" and "neo-conservative"
ideology in the United States are drawn from three main European
sources: Italian nationalism and Fascism, French Integralism, and
German National Socialism.
With respect to Italian nationalism and Fascism, we can see the
influence of Michael Ledeen, a specialist on Italian political thought,
who is a major neo-conservative thinker in the United States.
neo-conservatives, who control our foreign policy, by the way, appear
to incorporate elements of the nationalist thought of Enrico Corradini
(1865-1931) together with the Fascist program of Benito Mussolini.[25]
Most striking is the neo-conservative call for the United States to
have a foreign policy of "national greatness," which is precisely the
formulation of Corradini that inspired two Italian imperial wars
against Ethiopia. One can argue that, for the neo-conservatives, Iraq
is Mussolini's Ethiopia policy revisited.
The French integralism of Charles Maurras is paralleled in the American
"New Right," in both Protestant and Catholic manifestations. Maurras
himself was linked to the Martinist Order through his friendship with
its then Grand Master, Gérard Encausse (1865-1916), who was a follower
of St. Yves d'Alveydre. The Christian Coalition organization which
emerged in 1988, is but one example. In the last few years, we have
seen a revival of the ideas of the integralist Catholic, Jean Ousset,
himself a vector of Synarchy, and once the private secretary of Charles
Maurras, and, some French colleagues inform me, that Mr. Ousset's
operations after World War II, were financed by the Banque Worms group.
With respect to German Fascism, we can see in the United States today
the revival, over the last several decades, of the ideology of Carl
Schmitt, the Nazi jurist. This ideology, many believe, is directly
responsible for the police-state stance taken by the neo-fascist
"Federalist Society" of lawyers, established in the United States in
1982, who have worked inside and outside the Bush Administration to
erect what they call the "Unitary Executive." In Berlin today, I think
we should be frank and say the Federalist Society for over two decades
had been reviving the "Führerprinzip."
I discussed the revival of Carl Schmitt's foreign policy concepts by
Paul Nitze, and others, here in March. These concepts include the
concept of permanent "enmity" and "enemies," and the necessity for
"states of emergency." Such ideas were derived in part from the
writings of the Gustav Ratzenhofer (1842-1904), an Austrian General and
Social Darwinist sociologist.[26]
We can place the American Christian Right today within the context of
the Gleichschaltung [Nazification of all institutions] of 1933 and the
formation of the Protestant Reich Church. I would suggest that the 25
million hard-core fundamentalists forming President Bush's "political
base" in the United States-the 16 million Southern Baptists, in
particular, and another 9 million Adventists and Pentacostalists, for
example-parallel, although in a different form and in a different
time, the German Reich Church.[27]
In closing, I would like to suggest, with a sense of some urgency, that
colleagues here make an effort in their research and writing to focus
on comparative study of contemporary United States internal politics,
and external policy, with that of International Fascism of the 1920s
and 1930s.
Let me again quote Harold Ickes, the man who organized progressive
Republican support for President Roosevelt and the New Deal. Being a
Republican, I like to quote Mr. Ickes. In 1943, in the middle of World
War II, he said:
We should never forget that, in an era of unrest, a demagogue even as
fantastic as Hitler first appeared to be can develop at such a pace
that, before we realize it, he is beyond our catching. There are men
here, and in England and in France as well, who believe in their hearts
that a dictatorship is more desirable than democratic
self-government.... That type of American big business and concentrated
wealth are not afraid of a dictatorship, even such a one as Hitler's,
is attested by recent shocking disclosures with respect to secret and
intimate business alliances between them and German big
business-alliances that deliberately strike at the common man.[28]
[1] 13th Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist
International, Moscow 1933.
[2] For background see, Hans Rogger and Eugen Weber eds., The European
Right. A Historical Profile (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1966) and Ernst Nolte, Der Faschismus in seiner Epoche. Action
française, italienischer Faschismus, Nationalsozialismus, (Munich:
1965).
[3] For valuable insight into the New Deal, see, The Secret Diary of
Harold L. Ickes. The First Thousand Days 1933-1936 (New York: Simon &
Schuster, 1953).
[4] For background, see, Charles Higham, Trading with the Enemy. The
Nazi-American Money Plot 1933-1949 (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1983);
William C. McNeill, American Money and the Weimar Republic. Economics
and Politics on the Eve of the Great Depression (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1986); Henry Ashby Turner, Jr., German Big Business
and the Rise of Hitler (New York: Oxford, 1985); Joseph Borkin, The
Crime and Punishment of I.G. Farben (New York: The Free Press, 1978);
Richard Sasuly, IG Farben (New York: Boni Gaer, 1947); L. Wulfsohn et
G. Wernle, L'Evasion des Capitaux Alemands (Paris: Société Anonyme
d'Editions, 1923; P.F. de Villemarest, Les Sources Financières du
Nazisme (Cierrey, France: Editions CEI, 1984).
[5] For background on the French Right see, Eugen Weber, "France," in
Rogger and Weber, op. cit. pp. 71-127.
[6] The members of the committee were: John W. McCormack (D-Mass.),
Samuel Dickstein (D-N. Y.), Carl May Weideman (D-Mich.), Charles Kramer
(D-Calif.), Thomas A. Jenkins (R-Ohio), James Willis Taylor (R-Tenn.),
Ulysses Samuel Guyer (R-Kan.), Thomas W. Hardwick, Counsel.
[7] U.S. House of Representatives, 74th Congress, 1st Session, The
Special Committee on Un-American Activities Authorized to Investigate
Nazi Propaganda and Certain Other Propaganda Activities.
[8] He was a director of the Guaranty Trust Company, Anaconda Copper,
Chile Copper, Goodyear Tire, Bethlehem Steel, and the New York
Transportation Company. He was decorated with the Crown of Italy by the
Italian Fascist regime.
[9] As quoted in the Journal of the National Education Association. See
the Owsley related website: http://www.library.unt.edu/archives/
Owsley/openingpage/index.htm.
[10] Lammot (1880-1952), Irénée (1876-1963), and Pierre (1870-1954)
DuPont were the sons of Lammot DuPont (1831-84) and Mary Belin
(1839-1913), who was of Jewish ancestry. For background see, Leonard
Mosely, Blood Relations. The Rise and Fall of the duPonts of Delaware
(New York: Atheneum, 1980).
[11] See President Bush's speeches to the American Jewish Committee:
"President Attends the American Jewish Committees Centennial Dinner,"
May 4, 2006 at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/
releases/2006/05/20060504-15.html and "Remarks By the President to the
American Jewish Committee," May 3, 2001 at
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/ releases/2001/05/20010504.html.
[12] On Deterding see, Glyn Roberts, The Most Powerful Man in the
World. The Life of Sir Henry Deterding (New York: Covici Friede, 1938).
[13] As quoted in George Seldes, You Can't Do That (1937), p. 222.
[14] Acheson's father, Rev. Edward Campion Acheson, an Englishman, was
an Anglican priest who served in Canada before immigrating to the
United States and later becoming Bishop of Connecticut. His mother,
Eleanor Gooderham, was the granddaughter of William Gooderham, a
Canadian distillery magnate.
[15] See, Kevin Phillips, American Dynasty. Aristocracy, Fortune, and
the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush (New York: Viking, 2004),
passim.
[16] Frederick Rudolph, "The American Liberty League, 1934-1940," The
American Historical Review, Vol. 56, No. 1 (Oct. 1950), p. 28.
[17] Rudolph Walter, "Die seltsamen Lehren des Doktor Carrel. Wie ein
katholischer Arzt aus Frankreich zum Vordenker der radikalen Islamisten
wurde," Die Zeit, 31.07.03, No. 32.
[18] See, Geoffroy de Charnay [pseud.], Synarchie. Panorama de 25
***@aaes d'Activité Occulte (Paris: Editions Médicis, 1946).
[19] For background see, Frederick B. Artz, Reaction and Revolution
1814-1832 (New York: Harpers, 1934).
[20] For background see, George H. Nash, The Conservative Intellectual
Movement in the United States Since 1945 (New York: Basic Books, 1976)
and Shadia Drury, Leo Strauss and the American Right (New York: St.
Martin's Press, 1999).
[21] See, Kevin Phillips, American Theocracy (New York: Viking, 2006).
[22] Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Imperial Presidency (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1973).
[23] See, John W. Dean, Worse Than Watergate. The Secret Presidency of
George W. Bush (New York: Little Brown, 2004).
[24] For background information, see, RIGHT WEB at
http://rightweb.irc-online.org
[25] For background on the Right in Italy see, Salvatore Saladino,
"Italy," in Rogger and Weber, op. cit., pp. 208-260.
[26] For example, see, Gustav Ratzenhofer, Wesen und Zweck der Politik
(Leizig, 1893).
[27] See the speech of Secretary of State Rice to the Southern Baptist
Convention Annual Meeting, June 14, 2006.
http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2006/67896.htm
[28] Harold Ickes, The Autobiography of a Curmudgeon, Reynal &
Hitchcock, (1943).
©2006 by Clifford A. Kiracofe, Jr. All Rights Reserved